[Chivalry] – Agata Vanguard – Crusher

Konras

Hello All!!!

So lets get this party started
I will be making head gear based on concept made by Pior:



Here is current progress.



I made small changes in visor area to reflect the Agata helardry (https://tornbannerjira.atlassian.net/wiki/download/thumbnails/22085804/Agatha_Heraldry.png?version=1&modificationDate=1408043457715&api=v2). I am not sure about it yet, maybe I will return to cross version from the concept, however please let me know what you think about it

Still I will need to make a damage pass and tweak few thing here and there like scale of those bigass bolts

I am looking forward to your opinion:)
Cheers!

pior

It's looking fantastic already !! Great job man

sgtscience

Great looking sculpt and unique design. I'd maybe like to see the blue a bit more subtle... Like in the leather straps on the back and on the helm trim. The concept is really great too. I like how the visor cuts break the forms of the gold portions. I know it's design counter-intuitive, but it's also very striking. You might want to try playing around with that or exaggerating it a bit more in the model

Notes

You know what, you got my vote on this one. Everything flows nicely.

Nate Broach

This is very cool. I like that you guys got so many different material types, paint, steal, leather, gold. And the design is crazy! Lookin forward to this one!

Konras

Ok I gave this helmet another spin

Finally I decided to drop my visor modification and stick with this one designed by Pior. Now in my opinion its more clear what is actually going on with helm surfaces.

I resized down bolts as mentioned last time. I also added a little more of them.

I added also some cracks, paint imperfection, metal roughness and so on. I have those things on layers so I will yet adjust them according to your feedback, as I am worried in some areas they are to deep.

Please let me know what you think about it Here is the progress:

pior

That looks spot-on to me

Only thing I notice (on the side view) is the thickness of the main metal plating which could be reduced, but this can very well be adjusted in the lowpoly post-bake therefore that does not worry me at all.

As for the overall weathering, it might indeed be wise to bake the two versions (one all clean and one with the weathering) in order to easily adjust intensity later ...

As far as the visor design is concerned, I quite liked your variant with the Agatha dagger symbol too, so either of them is just fine I think

Good job !

mihalceanu

Looks great man

Konras

Never working with UDK made me loss some nerves today
I finally managed to load helmet in slot, however still I dont know how to preview this on test map in nicer lightning as when I am adding Vanguard to map he does not have slot that I choosen for him in assets editor.

Anyway here are some screens.



I baked both versions clean and one damaged. Comparing both however to aesthetics of Vanguard I though damaged version will look better.
UDK truly surprises me as there is better shading on static mesh version of helmet compared to skeletal mesh... also both are far far far off from 3point shader quality ^^'
Maybe I should find some better way to bake normals for UDK. If anyone has any materials about it please share

Nolt

Nice . Just follow the tutorials. It will get your through it pretty painless if you haven't worked with UDK. Just lots of checking the tutorial and then back to the editor

Konras

@9thKnight Yes but tutorial I found here ends on loading helmet into Assets Editor. That is where I grabbed bottom screen. Would be lovely to grab this character in better environment

Nolt

Ah, I gotcha! Yeah I don't know if you can really add a character to the scene with the helmet on.... Or if you can I don't think you can pose him like by adding an animation.

pior

I haven't worked with Unreal3 recently but if I remember correctly, the engine completely recalculates surface tangents, bitangents and normals on import for dynamic models, basically resetting them to its own default state (likely for optimization purposes - don't quote me on this tho, I havent fully checked ...)

What this means is that if your .fbx was exported from a Maya version released after 2013, using the new default Maya settings for shading and normals averaging (also known as "face-weighted"), the shading of the 3d model used for baking will be slightly different from the one of the imported UDK mesh. This might be what is causing the odd shading artefacts on the helmet. (Now of course this is only true if you are using Maya in the first place. Max for instance doesn't have this issue, since the program doesn't have any of these new surface normals smoothing options by default.)

I plan to dig a little bit into all that tomorrow, but I think it would be safe to : set the Maya shading options to "unweighted" (there is a global option in the preferences, and a per-object option too) ; and also, generating the Tangent Space from an Object Space map using Handplane, which I think has a Unreal mode.

Konras

I am using Max. Maya was always an mystery to me I will have a look on handplane. If it has UDK mode than it will be perfect I planned to try handplane workflow anyway so now could be a perfect occasion for this

Zelfit

Simple tip from me: place UV, make all UV borders hard edges, export low poly, export low-poly cage, bake object-space normal in xNormal, load low-poly and O_normal in Handplane, convert to UDK, in UDK when import mesh uncheck "explicit normals", "import tangents" and then import handplane-created normal. And you'll get perfectly oriented normal map in UDK.

Nolt

Or just make sure that your normals are baked with a -y in xNormal. If you bake your normal in Max you're fine. If you already baked your map in xNormal with a +y in the normal, just invert your green channel in photoshop.

Konras

I made some testing with xNormal and its almost perfect. I used loaclXYZ in 3DSMax for handplane input and FBX that I later used for UDK. I guess I will now check method that @Zelfit suggested to see if that will be perfect

Here is model just with Normalmap on and gray maps for Diffuse, Spec and Glow to avoid confuson.
ps. Ahh and its Skeletal Mesh, I think Static Mesh looked even better

pior

Oh awesome, that's nice to see that the Handplane route is so accurate (as usual ! Such a great tool ...)

9thknight : it's actually a little bit more complicated than a just a green channel to flip. At a deeper level, and even with compatible Yup/down, there is a whole bunch of ways to interpret the delicate combination of a model with it's own specific vertex normals, tangents and bitangents + a tangent space normalmap applied to it (basically : there are as many ways to interpret them as there is 3d applications and game engines). While it might not be too noticeable with organic models, these subtle calculation differences create shading artifacts on hardsurface models, as illustrated by the previous screenshot Konras posted.

But thankfully Handplane takes care of this issue, acting like a bridge to generate a normal map perfectly synchronized with a given engine (here UDK) - resulting in the beautifully clean bake Konras just posted.

In short : yay !!

Nolt

pior wrote: »

Oh awesome, that's nice to see that the Handplane route is so accurate (as usual ! Such a great tool ...)

9thknight : it's actually a little bit more complicated than a just a green channel to flip. At a deeper level, and even with compatible Yup/down, there is a whole bunch of ways to interpret the delicate combination of a model with it's own specific vertex normals, tangents and bitangents + a tangent space normalmap applied to it (basically : there are as many ways to interpret them as there is 3d applications and game engines). While it might not be too noticeable with organic models, these subtle calculation differences create shading artifacts on hardsurface models, as illustrated by the previous screenshot Konras posted.

But thankfully Handplane takes care of this issue, acting like a bridge to generate a normal map perfectly synchronized with a given engine (here UDK) - resulting in the beautifully clean bake Konras just posted.

In short : yay !!

Really? Can't say that I have ever had an issue in exporting to any engine other than adjusting for the y channel. Depending on which file type you use, you can export your normals, bitrangents and tangents and I think it would be a lot more common to use a tangent space normal as opposed to a world space normal.

I haven't used handplane so I guess what exactly is my benefit in using it as opposed to xNormal? Does it actually do that much more for me?

pior

It's not always noticeable, but there are some very subtle differences going on - which is the very reason why Handplane exists.

The OS map acts as a solid basis that Handplane can then work with. For instance, this process is the only way to get an accurate bake 100% correct for the Source Engine/Dota. Now of course, very good assets can be made with less precise bakes ; but when surface accuracy is important, as with reflective surfaces, getting that stuff right is pretty crucial. And of course this process also allows for a perfect, seamless transition over the symmetry lines of models, which is always great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeP-tOKryxU

I hope this clarifies it (and now I'll stop hijacking Konras' thread )

Nolt

Thanks for that pior. Interesting. I have found a couple ways around this by messing with the UVs and smoothing groups but that is good to know that there is another (possibly better) option.

soulstice

this helmet is really sick. i love the design, good job!

Jalcober

This is looking great Konras!

Konras

Ok so texture pass done ^_____^
I will be uploading helmet right now as deadline is upon us all!!
Here are images with helmet on "test map", in editor and with textures shown:

Nolt

Yeah, man! Get that submitted Best of luck to you

bounchfx

this is just awesome, you knocked it out of the park!

Konras

Thanks 9thKnight and bounchfx. Submitted http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323044840
Time for some good sleep

Nolt

Niiiice, just get that submitted here on polycount now